International consultants on bank regulation, and supervision for developing countries, often base their advice on how their home country does things, for lack of information on practice in other countries. Recommendations for reform have tended to be shaped by bias rather than facts. To better...

Which public policies and ownership structures enhance the governance of banks? The authors construct a new database on the ownership of banks internationally and then assess the ramifications of ownership, shareholder protection laws, and supervisory and regulatory policies on bank valuations....

The authors report cross-country data on commercial bank regulation and ownership in more than 60 countries. They evaluate the links between different regulatory/ownership practices in those countries and both financial sector performance and banking system stability. They document substantial...

The authors draw on their new database on bank regulation and supervision in 107 countries to assess different governmental approaches to bank regulation and supervision and evaluate the efficacy of different regulatory and supervisory policies. First, the authors assess two broad and competing...

This paper presents new and official survey information on bank regulations in 142 countries and makes comparisons with two earlier surveys. The data do not suggest that countries have primarily reformed their bank regulations for the better over the last decade. Following Basel guidelines many...

This paper reassesses what works in banking regulation based on the new World Bank survey (Survey IV) of bank regulation and supervision around world. The paper briefly presents new and official survey information on bank regulations in more than 125 countries, makes comparisons with earlier...

The authors question the widespread belief that market discipline on banks cannot be effective in less developed financial environments. There is no systematic tendency for low-income countries to lack the prerequisites for market discipline. Offsetting factors to the weaker market and formal...

This paper studies whether there is a connection between finance and growth at the firm level. It employs a new dataset of 150,165 equity and bond issuances around the world, matched with income and balance sheet data for 62,653 listed firms in 65 countries over 1990-2016. Three main patterns...

How many and which firms issue equity and bonds in domestic and international markets, how do these firms grow relative to non-issuing firms, and how does firm performance vary along the firm size distribution? To evaluate these questions, a new data set is constructed by matching data on...

The authors find no evidence for the superiority of either market-based or bank-based financial systems for industries dependent on external financing. But they find overwhelming evidence that industries heavily dependent on external finance grow faster in economies with higher levels of...